The website/blog of Stu Jenks. Below and to the left are categories where you can search for my photos, words and music. My e-mail is stujenks@gmail.com. Also you can follow me on Facebook, Twitter, at my store at www.stujenks.org and on bandcamp. Have a blessed day, y'all.

November 02, 2018

Well, Alexa and I are here in North Carolina now. My studio is all set up upstairs. My art work hangs in the same house as a Rembrandt, an Utrillo and a Whistler. I'm looking for fuller employment. Alexa has a job she likes. I'm getting my bearings around town. Beautiful town, beautiful wife. I'm loving this small city of Greensboro.

Cherry Picking Leviticus (Pamela's Baby Rocking Chair, Vol. 2). Here's the cover for the premium paperback. It'll also be available as an affordable ebook.

I'll keep you post on it's release. You'll have it in your hot little hands by Christmas. Promise.

And vote on Tuesday, November 6th, my birthday. Give me the gift I really want. A Democratic U.S. House of Representatives, no Republican super majority in the North Carolina General Assembly, and good Progressives down ballot in many states.

May 06, 2018

It's Summer and time for a print sale. All images in this post are 13" x 19" premium fine art prints, printed on archival papers using archival inks, signed and printed by me. If left out of direct sunlight, these prints will not fade for at least 100 to 200 years. $125.00, shipping included. (Retail through my art reps would be $250.00 and above per print.) Click on this link to go to my online store to order your prints.

Many more images are for sale than are shown in this post. These are just the ones that are bagged and boarded for immediate sale. Contact me via email if you are interested in other prints from my portfolio.

Thanks for your continued support of my work. Your purchases help keep me alive and well. Thank you.

April 03, 2018

I've been going through all 17 of my external hard drives, part of a house cleaning and studio cleaning before Alexa and I move to North Carolina (Due to some hickups, looks like it won't be until September of 2018 when my wife and I move to Greensboro.) While doing that, I revisited some old images, and found some discarded images that deserved a second look.

Also, the images from my new "Two Newlyweds" series are in this post as well as some other new stuff. Hope you enjoy them too.

And as always, everything is for sale, either as a digital file or as a print. Simply contact me at stujenks@gmail.com for prices.

February 06, 2018

Both of their right arms are straight. Both of their left arms are bent.Both were raised and educated in The South. Both were born into the Episcopal Church.Both are lifelong Democrats.One is cooking one of her first meals for her husband. The other talks worriedly on the phone to her lawyer.One deeply loved her husband til the day he died in 2001.The other fiercely loves her husband today.One photograph was taken 70 years ago.The other was taken last month.One is my mother.The other is my wife.

November 28, 2017

Yep. I'm getting married to a wonderful woman named Alexa! (As a writer, you're not supposed to overuse exclamation points, but this is the time for them!)

You can donate to our wedding registry at www.stujenks.org, to help me move my studio and my life to North Carolina in early 2018.

We will be getting married very soon, and neither of us are rich people. If you would like to give a cash wedding gift, you can do so at www.stujenks.org. It will really help. The money will go for things like a washer and dryer, a rented Penske truck to get my stuff to North Carolina, and resources to help us begin our life together. No gift is too small.

And if you would like to give a physical wedding gift or write us a check, just send it to P.O.Box 161, Tucson, Arizona 85702. Make the check out to me.

Thanks y'all for all your help, now and over the years, so I could be a working artist, writer and musician. It means the world to me.

You will like Alexa. I sure do. Photos of us will be forthcoming, on this blog and on my Facebook page.

I'm so happy to soon be Alexa's husband and she's very excited to soon be Mrs. Alexa Jenks! I'm joyfully misty-eyed much of the time these days.

Again, thanks for your help. And don't forget to give me your snail mail address so I can send you a thank-you card.

1993-2008: Mark's bowl sat on Mom's dining room table for years, a vessel where Mom put old greeting cards and this month's bills.

2008: Mary Jenks moved to Arizona and quickly became very demented and very ill. She moved into an adult care home within months. She could only take a few things with her. The bowl came to live with me.

2011: Mary and Pamela Jenks died that summer, within three weeks of each other. Yeah. I know. It was tough but a blessing. Life is complicated.

2017: Maybe I'm starting a new series. Maybe not. But I seem to be traveling hither and yon with Mom's bowl, taking photos of it in pretty and interesting places. And it's not just for the memory of Mary Jenks or as an acknowledgment of Mark Hewitt's body of work. It is partly that, but it's also a walking prayer of sorts, for a woman I love very much who is going through some tough times.

So those are the ideas around the bowl. Remembrance, respect, love and prayer.

(Oh. And at some point, this bowl is going to break. It is clay. Pottery breaks. And I am trucking it around rocks and hard things. Pottery is not fond of rocks and hard things. But the plan when it breaks is to glue it back together and keep photographing it. We all have cracks. We all have wounds and scars. It's what makes us interestingly and lovingly human. This bowl will have scars too. But I'll be careful until that happens. Promise.)

August 18, 2017

As part of the Dia De Los Muertos show at Tohono Chul Park in Tucson, The Pamela's Baby Rocking Chair Installation is up and ready to go. The opening is Thursday, August 24 at 5:30 p.m.. The show runs until November 8th. Thanks so much to James and Karen for allowing me to be part of this show.

And this post goes out to all those folk who live outside of Southern Arizona, so you all can see and enjoy the piece too. To read the artist's statement for the piece, just click on this link.

Again, thank you everyone for your financial and emotional support this summer. It's been a tough one for me and for many. You all have helped more than you know.

July 21, 2017

This installation will be part of the upcoming Dia de los Muertos show at Tohono Chul Park, in Tucson, Arizona from August 24th, until early November. I am thrilled to bring this installation to the world for the very first time at Tohono Chul. Many thanks to James Schaub and Karen Hayes for making it all possible.

My sister Pamela Jenks has been dead six years now. Died of breast cancer at age 62. I miss her. Not all the time, but from time to time. I certainly don’t miss the selfish, mean, loud drunk she was most of her adult life, but I surely miss the considerate, kind, loving woman she became the last six months before she died. Thanks, Pamela, for being the sister I always wanted to have, those last few weeks. From soon after Pamela’s death in 2011 to the present, I’ve been taking my sister’s toddler rocking chair hither and yon. Due to her alcoholism and her general fear of the big bad world, Pamela Jenks was a virtual shut-in the last couple of decades of her life, living in my family’s falling-down old home place in Raleigh, North Carolina. I first took Pamela’s Baby Rocking Chair out and about, when I drove it and me to my sister’s grave in rural Virginia in 2012. Since then, with only a few breaks, I’ve photographed the PBRC all over the place, from the streets of New York City, to the hills of San Francisco, from the wilds of Sonora, Mexico to the snows of Utah, from the Atlantic Ocean in South Carolina to Swami’s Beach in Encinitas, California. I’ve taken Pamela’s chair to where she was too afraid to go. Then last winter, something unexpected happened. My sister’s chair wasn’t so much about her anymore. It became my chair. It represented me as well as my sister, about my journey through life, not so much about my memories of her and of my deceased mother and father. The chair is me, and judging from all the patrons over the years who have bought prints of the PBRC, the chair has become you as well. This summer has been financially and emotionally tough for me. Hell, it’s tough all over, but creating this installation has put a number of things in their proper perspective. 1) Pamela’s dead. I am not. 2) I’m still making stuff, recording music, typing words. Pamela’s ain’t doing no cross stitch no mo. And 3) I have friends and family that I love very much and they care for me too. They can talk to me and hold me and hug me and I can do the same back. Pamela, however, is in the grave, unable to humanly love and touch me, and she can’t be touched or hugged back or listened to. But maybe that’s her over there, skipping through the trees, a teenager having her whole life ahead of her, not seeing the future alcoholism, the desperate loneliness, the checkered job history, and the resentful bitterness that made a cold bed for her to lie in every night. Maybe her light-filled spirit is right here, right now, right over there, free and happy. What did you just say Pamela? “I’m fucking proud of you, bro,” says the angel ghost off my left shoulder. “I fucking love ya.” “Thanks, Pamela,” I whisper to myself. “I love you too.”

To read the Pamela’s Baby Rocking Chair book, you can buy the e-book on Amazon and on other sites, or listen to or buy the audio book on iTunes, or Spotify, or if you want to buy the real live paperback book book, contact me at www.stujenks.org. The second Pamela’s Baby Rocking Chair book, A Chair In The Wilderness, will be released sometime in 2018. Have a blessed day, y’all.

Below is the introduction/cautionary note to the readers of Victor Mothershead: U.S. Secret Service. My previous Step Zero novels have produced, how can I say it, some interesting and unexpected emails. ("Stu Jenks, you suck."). This intro was written to help quell some of nastier emails, if that's at all possible in the digital online wasteland of people with personality disorders. But I try.

And if you steal the ebook online, by striping out the code and putting it on a pier to pier site, to hell with you. I ain't going to pray against you, but I ain't going to pray very hard for you either.

Bottom Line? The new novel is out, and I'd like you to buy.

Thanks guys.

Love y'all,

Stu.

A Cautionary Note From The Author:

You hold in your hot little hands, either as an e-book or as a real-live-book-book, the fourth installment in my Step Zero series, but I believe some polite warnings to readers are needed here, given questions and concerns I have received in the past.

This is a stand alone novel but if you haven’t read Step Zero, the first book, or Air & Gravity, the second book, some of the plot twists, suspense reveals and arch conclusions here may spoil some of your enjoyment of those two previous books, if and when you read them. (Balthazar and Zeeba, the third book in the series, is a Christmas novel with its own individual side arch, which will not be affected by reading Victor Mothershead.)

Victor Mothershead: U.S. Secret Service is a hard R rated book as are Step Zero and Air & Gravity. There is a ton of cussing and a bit of sex in this book. Victor himself is a polite, soft spoken man who rarely speaks profanity but in the Step Zero world of 2079, particularly in the American Southwest, folks cuss like sailors on drunken leave and have sex like they will never ever screw again. It’s just how my characters roll. So if foul language and hot sex upset you, thanks for buying this book but you might want to give it to your college nephew to read. (Regarding the age appropriateness of this book, 17 years old and above seems about right. Use your best judgment. You know your kids.)

Many of my characters in the Step Zero universe believe in a spiritual force called God-Goddess-All-There-Is or GGATI. It’s a made up higher power by me, not affiliated with Wiccan or Pagan faiths (Not that there is anything wrong with those.) I was simply trying to expand the spirituality and religiosity of 2079 to include a specific feminine side as well as the masculine and universal aspects.

The politics of many of these characters is progressive and in some cases, specifically Democratic. The Presidents mentions in the Step Zero series are all Democrats. If you are a Republican or an Independent, and don’t agree with some of the policies mentions in this book, relax. It’s OK. This is speculative fiction. It’s the United States in the year 2079. I’ve just made this stuff up. Sasha Obama of course is a real young women today, but President Sasha Obama Fulbright and Vice President Florence Biden are completely made up people. You don’t have to agree with the politics here to enjoy this read. The characters are fun, the story I think is strong, and did I mention there is sex in this book?

Lastly, 12 Step fellowships play a major role in many of the characters’ lives in Victor Mothershead, U.S. Secret Service; one, a real program, Alcoholics Anonymous, the other, a fictional one, Mormon Tea Anonymous. None of the characters here represent any living or dead members of Alcoholic Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Cocaine Anonymous, Al-Anon or any other 12 Step groups. That being said, I have talked with many clean and sober members of these fellowships over the years and I have attended a few 12 Step meetings myself, but I will neither confirm nor deny if I personally belong to those groups. There are by-laws regarding anonymity of members speaking publicly. The problem is, if you thought I was in A.A., or C.A., or N.A., and you hated this book or disliked me personally or think in any way I poorly represent a particular recovery program, you might feel reticent to seek help from those 12 Step programs if you ever needed it. They tell me these by-laws or ‘Traditions’ are there to protect the fellowships from its own members’ mistakes, yet recovering people want very much to be available and to help everyone, regardless of gender, race, color, creed, economic situation, and political leaning. Bottom line is no one in this book is any one person in A.A., but the views of some of the characters do reflect the beliefs of some members of those Fellowships.

I truly hope you enjoy this book. I’ve enjoyed making it for you.

Keep your lamp trimmed and burning, and as President Fulbright often said: “Be nice.”

Stu JenksSpring, 2016Studio BR-549Tucson, Arizona

All photographs by Stu Jenks. Book design and layout by Gail Cross of Desert Isle Designs, Mesa, Arizona.